


You Know Better Than It

by oroc



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: BDSM, Consensual Mind Control, Daddy Kink, Dubious Consent, Falconry, Horror, M/M, Master/Pet, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 13:06:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8163022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oroc/pseuds/oroc
Summary: "No, no. Silly. I'm Batman."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the Arkham series, especially 'Arkham City' and 'Arkham Knight'. There are differences between these games and the comics, particularly in 'Knight'.
> 
> Playing hard to get with the 100% ending canon rather than playing fast and loose.

Jason’s comm crackled -- someone was trying to hack in. He put out Penguin's cigarette in an ashtray and broke the holder.

 

"What? You can't just - that was my _mother's_ , you little cunt!"

 

Jason shot him through the chin, and the comm started up. Cobblepot didn’t make any noise afterward.

 

Screaming sung in his other ear - circling flitters decorated his peripheral vision, casting no shadow.

 

"It's Robin," said a broken voice on the comm.

 

"Good job breaking the encryption, boy wonder. You get to talk to me. Give me a sec."

 

"Sure?" Tim was surprised. Of course he was surprised. Jason had accepted - recently - that he wasn't an open book in sound and sight, but it wouldn't make him change costume any faster. It took five seconds to grapnel to the top of the old Ace Chemicals building, two to twiddle the side of his helmet and accept the line -- "Hi," Tim said, clearly.

 

"Let's keep this frequency between us from now on. What can I do for you, Tweetybird?"

 

"I've got something for you, actually."

 

"Right...?" Jason's voice was still one side of tense - he kept the friendliness in his tone that he used for interrogation. "Name your price as you tell me about it. I've got stuff to do tonight."

 

"I want you to check an address I'm sending. Bruce's files on your mother just got sent to Barb."

 

"And I'll get them if I go in, and... don't kill anyone, and -"

 

"Bruce is gone, Jason."

 

"...that's not --"

 

"Bruce is _gone_ , Jason." Jason half-listened as he flipped and flew his way to the address: 143 Park Row. "I think this case needs you, not me."

 

How was Tim so calm about this?

 

"You remember when I killed Arthur Brown, Jason? Last Sunday. I know you expect me to judge you with no right to, but – I’m not. You don't get to have this argument with me. Your invitation is always open."

 

Tim’s voice was so _soft_. He was nothing like Bruce - he had the forensics shit down even more than Bruce did, and nothing like the physical power of anyone else in the little Bat-clan.

 

"I... I want to thank you, but. Let me finish this job, then send me the file. I'm not ready for - this conversation, Drake. That one.” Silence. It was probably clear. It was incredibly awkward, all of a sudden. “You know the one."

 

"Drake-Gordon."

 

"Mrs. Gordon."

 

"Mmmm. Sounds better."

 

"You're sickening, Robin. Back in ten." When had they got so lackadaisical about using their real names? Well, Jason never had a real birth certificate, so he could, conceivably, just make up a name.

 

The apartment is 'abandoned' in the supervillain lair sense, but there are only five Riddlerbots painting lime green sketches here and there, little scratchy portraits of bats being eaten. Nygma must have had other safehouses around the place. This wasn't what Tim wanted him to check: Nygma had moved out of real organised crime for the moment, death-traps only being suited for Bruce and Selina.

 

"Why destroy the manor?" The robots were probably recording him. Nygma wouldn't have been able to resist a jibe, though, if he was actually listening, and Jason could take it later. "Your mother and father's home. The Regency room. All of it. Did you blow up the Cave, too?"

 

There was a rumble outside. Thunder.

 

The robots ignored him, genially. Jason had obviously been recognised as intellectually inferior in the 'not allowed to do the test' sense rather than the 'I'll insist you're stupid when I feel stupid and you have to solve 3500 riddles in the next two minutes or you’re a dumb-dumb’ sense.

 

Under the floorboards in the kitchen was $13M worth of heroin. In the living room, another $12M.

 

Right.

 

The deeds to the place weren't Riddler's, right now. This kind of deposition was a very quick affair – Jason heard a beep.

 

An upload from Oracle. It was a WhichOpp chat -- minor Falcones discussing this and one other address.

 

"Robin got the other stash," Barb said, clear as day, on a channel he believed he'd properly encrypted. Well, it was her. "He's got the physical files for you at the Hellsgate incinerator."

 

"Much obliged."

 

-

 

Gordon’s Mayoral election posters were still posted around the place, obnoxiously bright blues and reds standing out against the grime. The contrasting colours on the near-black grimy wall had the same patchwork look as the Mayor himself did, now that Jason looked the posters over. They looked like Jim Gordon's head had been transplanted onto an old Bond film. Pristine suit, but Jim's face ruined it.

 

It was cute, really.

 

"I've got the merch, Mr. Frodo," Jason whispered into the hood, checking around for - but, of course, the old Arkham Knight helmet would have given them the frequencies he scanned with. He'd just have to trust Tim to show up. (He’d also have to trust that Tim didn’t mind Jason hacking the Panessa Studios’ computer to find the audiobook he’d been listening to.) "Let's get burning."

 

No Tim appeared.

 

In the office, there was no Tim.

 

In the Incinerator room – nothing even remotely Tim-like.

 

It was odd how quickly Jason had started thinking of Robin by his first name.

 

Upon leaving the top-floor office again, a pair of ankles closed around Jason’s neck and thighs a leopard would be proud of lifted him up -- and --

 

"D- gck-"

 

"Good to see you, too, little wing," Nightwing murmured, bumping Jason's hood against his thigh once before dropping him. That was, if Jason knew himself any well, half of the time necessary for the Bat-standard blood choke.

 

He coughed, pulled out his grapnel on reflex, put it back away, and tried to hide the thrill of --

 

All-over mask. Right. No need for appearances.

 

But Dick was smiling at him so brightly…

 

"You people are fucked up."

 

"Mmhm." Dick held up the bag of goodies, and tossed them over the bridge into the waiting molten slag below them. Jason followed, unable to think of anything to say to that. They quietly exited the building, finding a nice patch of shadow to talk. It was a darker night than Gotham’s usual, but not colder.

 

"This doesn't make us --"

 

"Files," Dick said, pulling out a briefcase. "The combination's your birthday."

 

"Are you messing with me to get me to leave?"

 

"You're very welcome --" Dick grinned his winning Southern Belle grin and raised his grapnel to leave - it wasn't a poor idea, identity-wise, for Nightwing to have that kind of voice, but it was still bizarre to hear it from someone not born with it.

 

"No, no, don't." Jason gripped Dick's forearm with enough force to really feel it through the gauntlet. The ridiculously thick gauntlet - all of theirs were, now. "I appreciate this, okay? All of you. I don't... I don't mind you coming in for me, after. After what I did."

 

"Jason," Dick said, like he was a puppy shitting in the wrong place. "It doesn't matter what you did."

 

"Yes, it --"

 

"Jason." Dick grabbed his arm in return - then bent his held arm to grab the other one - a nearly fraternal knot. "Nyssa Ratko's set up in Bludhaven and I have to flush her out. I'm gonna transfer my address to you after this, and we can talk in three days. Trust me."

 

"Okay," Jason murmured, cowed. There was something in Dick's eyes Jason hadn't seen outside of Crane's gas. "I do, you know. I – even when Joker."

 

"Let’s forget about him and move on. I know." Dick rapped his knuckles on Jason's helmet, and he flew away.


	2. Chapter 2

So she stole money. Changed around property deeds. Organised property for the Mob, and later for super criminals --

 

So she abandoned her child. So what?

 

So she had, in fact, been directly involved in setting aside that wing of Arkham for Joker to use on Jason. Not surprising.

 

So?

 

"Jason," Tim's voice rang in his head.

 

No - the voice was real. Tim had the frequency. "Not right now."

 

"I heard it, Jason," Tim's voice rang from behind the window.

 

"Go away."

 

"I can't, actually, go away." Tim's voice wasn't ringing anymore, as he'd entered the room. Jason kept his eyes trained on the blood in front of him. "I just witnessed first-degree murder."

 

"Tim, you..."

 

"I knew you would, Jason." Thick, armoured fingers closed around his shoulder - tight. As if he'd run from this. "But you shouldn't have."

 

"Tim." He tried to push as much danger into his voice as he could - but he could still see his mother's dead face. "No."

 

"You shouldn't have killed your mother."

 

"I."

 

"Come with me." He tugged a bit. “Come with us.”

 

"To..." Jason turned - it was better to ignore her. She was gone, now. "To jail? The cops? _Arkham?_ Really?"

 

"No," Tim said - he was smiling Dick's smile at him. Dick's 'I know what you don't know' one. Not any of Robin's, or Nightwing's. No theatrics, though the expression was deliberate. "No, Jason. We're going to the Cave."

 

"No." Jason wrung his fingers. He thought he'd trained himself to stop. He thought he'd been trained, full stop, that he had any sense of control -- "I can't. It's gone. It's all."

 

"Come." Dick's hand dug into his other shoulder. He could feel them both through the coat, through the armour. Jason moved - and both pushed him into place. "It's okay, Jason."

 

"It's not - I killed – if I’d killed Joker, would you actually give a shit about this?"

 

"Let’s forget about him and move on,” Tim murmured, and – they kept saying that exactly the same way, soft and distant. Rehearsed? “We'll show you the Cave. Show you everything." Tim had dropped to whisper in his ear - helmet or no.

 

"Everything will be okay,” Dick said into the other.

 

Jason choked.

 

"We'll be a family again."

 

"Come back."

 

So soft.

 

"No."

 

They both let go in the same instant. Jason turned, and they were gone. The door to the apartment opened - they wouldn't see Jason yet, but the smell was bleach and sweat and an upsettingly cardamom-y cologne.

 

"You gonna do anything with Sandra for Hallowe'en this year?"

 

"Yeah, we're going to Metropolis."

 

Nico and Tony Corradini. Falcone's disposal team. Jason had used them before, the same way, organising the removal of individual targets by faking a call to them - they weren't the sort to ask questions, and, well, record-keeping of such things was frowned upon beyond word of mouth.

 

Jason left by the window, and started towards his safehouse by grapnel. Costume stored, and weapons stored, Jason walked out onto the street, and walked for six hours, to the Manor.


	3. Chapter 3

There was nothing in the Manor grounds.

 

The wreckage hadn't been properly cleared. The security system of the perimeter was still active, allegedly so the treacle-slow resolution of the Wayne Estate could proceed.

 

There was even, Jason had learned, a trust fund for his most prominent alias. He had rejected this for obvious reasons.

 

The cliffs overlooking the Bay were the only obstacle to the Batwing's entrance, though. A quick grapnel to the remaining wall of the East Wing, and he could rappel down to the Batwing's entrance with relative ease. Safety, even. So he did. This was easier than when he'd done this in training, for when things went wrong with the Manor entrance.

 

The waterfall was as refreshing as it had ever been. Jason saw the Cave, then, as it was --

 

And it really was as it was. There was hardly a difference from the days he had been there.

 

He saw the old Batwing, hovering in place, wasting fuel for appearance's sake.

 

He saw the penny. The Tyrannosaur. The old car -

 

He saw the cases, and cried, and saw the memorial, and cried some more. He set the helmet to soundproof himself.

 

Jason found the computer - already logged-in, all kinds of files ready for him to view - and was about to call out, or he was about to use the computer, but his body decided to crease over and bawl some more, instead. A pair of thick, warm arms wrapped around his throat, and he thanked God for his luck.

 

"Go to sleep, Jason," Batman whispered.

 

He woke up blind, and warm.

 

He couldn't see anything - or hear it. There was something leather and padded tied around his head. The pads over his eyes and ears made it comfortable enough to have been designed for someone who consented to it.

 

Jason moved his hands - bound to his sides. Nylon rope. The knots gave a little when he moved them - no cut-off of his circulation. A quick twist, and yes, he was partly suspended. He fought down the panic attack. An Arkhamite wouldn't be this sadistic.

 

Though -

 

Bruce was unmasked on live television. Anyone who could rappel down into the Cave would now know about it - any of the villains who could fly. Firefly. Hatter, presumably, could --

 

"Jason," Bruce. "It's me."

 

"You faked your own death for - what, how long? Did you just want to blow up the house for the sake of it? You childish fuck?"

 

"It's less complicated than that."

 

"What are you doing this to me for? You seemed almost upset about what Joker did, before."

 

Bruce could throw his voice - the Bat voice - and Jason had no decent idea where he was, so all he could do was wait. He didn't really have to - Bruce untied the laces around the hood as soon as he finished his sentence.

 

"That was so you wouldn't know where you were, and to stop you attacking me. I want to talk. I want you to... I want to take what you can give me, Jason."

 

"I don't work for you any --"

 

"No. No." Bruce looked awful: pallid, veiny... Almost like he was under the gas, but there was something else off about his face. Something darker. Not the shadows --

 

Jason's eyes adjusted to the dim blue light around them.

 

"I mean - verbally. How I failed you."

 

"You think that'd make it okay?"

 

"Nothing will redeem me for failing you."

 

"You _left_ me --"

 

"That's what I meant, yes." Bruce sat in front of Jason, and undid the knot between his ankles. Hot blue eyes - tinged with something - looked over his face like a dog looking at its own faeces.

 

"-- to him. You didn't even think to look in the abandoned section of the one place - the ONE PLACE - that he was most often. You knew I was going after him. You got my message. And what? How long was it before you --" Jason breathed, for once, and waited to be interrupted.

 

He wasn't interrupted.

 

"-- thank you, mother _fucker_ , before you replaced me? With some other poor little rich boy like you, whose folks hadn't even died yet? Bet he's better. I know he's better. I saw what he did on the prion infection. I know you're - I know you - you would've done anything for Barb, or Dick, but I - I."

 

"I've got a lot of time," Bruce whispered, expressionless. But he was shaking. "I'll - I'll listen. I'll believe you, Jason. I'll call you whatever you want. I'll receive any physical punishment you want to give me after this, as well. I owed you both our lives for failing you, and I owe you mine twice over after last Hallowe'en."

 

"Sanctimonious piece of _shit_."

 

"True."

 

"Failure."

 

"Especially true."

 

"You're not my father."

 

Bruce nodded – presumably, he thought that too much verbal acknowledgement would get old, mean less. Jason's eyes flicked down, caught on the red bird on his chest. He shouldn't have bothered painting himself for a family he wasn’t part of. Shouldn't have...

 

His Militia’s attack, plus Scarecrow’s gas, had taken twenty lives in total, which was miraculous. They left five hundred people with permanent brain damage. None of them were 'civilians', by Jason's or Bruce's standards. Still. So many people, dead.

 

But Bruce --

 

"You took me here to punish me, didn't you?"

 

"No. You committed -- you -- but your --" Bruce stopped. He closed his eyes, and looked down. "Force of habit. I don't have those rules anymore, Jason. I don't see myself as someone to punish others. There's no more 'Batman', but the."

 

These abortive sentences never got old.

 

Bruce glanced up - his entire face and body were darker. Now that Jason could see a little better - he was a natural 20/20, but it was very dark in there - he could see what was wrong: Bruce was hairier. Downier. All over. Not even a beard - and they were in a furbished cave, still, but the rock was different than the Cave’s.

 

Had he found a new one? Were they even still in the Gotham area?

 

But Bruce’s appearance was more important.

 

"What the fuck are you, man?" Jason struggled in earnest, now - fingers found the third sheath on his left, and he was cut out. Bruce didn't stop him.

 

Jason didn't move. They sat, facing each other.

 

"I have changed myself, a little." Bruce looked down. His voice hadn't changed from the Batman one since he got in - was he just doing Batman 24/7 now?

 

All alone? That could push him over whatever edges the gunshot that killed his folks didn’t.

 

But Dick and Tim told him to come.

 

"O-kay. You're gonna answer that question, though, later. Where's Alfred?"

 

"He's in touch, but he's retired. The island is his, now. He passed along his recipes, though..." Bruce opened his palms outward.

 

"You haven't cooked a decent meal in your life." Jason leaned back – and sensation finally reached his back. He was on a leather sofa.  

 

"I've been practising. As I -"

 

"And how many innocent people have died from those experiments of yours?"

 

"No-one is innocent in Gotham City, Red Hood. I... I'm offering you a place to stay. I want."

 

"You want it to be like old times, with you glowering ahead and me trying to work out what the fuck you're trying to say to me by a language of grunts which only you can speak?"

 

"No. I will speak to you, now. I want to atone, and I want to offer you what I can to accomplish that as far as is possible." Bruce held out his - entirely human - hand. His costume, such as it was, seemed mostly leather and cloth – grey and black, a cowl that was pulled back. No armour. "Time, home, my life."

 

"You want me to fucking marry you?" It's a joke. It's –

 

Jason thought about the age difference between when he went out to kill the Joker versus now,and how creepy the age difference between them – nearly 20 years – how creepy _was_ it? Was it as creepy as Ra’s pimping his daughter and Bruce and Talia loving that? Was it as creepy as Barbara’s probably Orwellian surveillance of her loved ones?

 

The 'J' on Jason's cheek doesn't cause the twitching. He knew for a fact it wasn't neurologically capable of that.

 

Bruce's hand touched it.

 

"You handed me over to him, pretty much." Jason didn't move. The touch was bare-handed. It wasn't bad. It was soothing. Jason believed, very strongly, that he should not be soothed by the weird-fuck Megabat Bruce.

 

"Essentially, yes. That was the other thing I wanted to offer you... Not employment. Some form of family, if you decide you wish for it. There is no time limit on that offer besides my --"

 

"Get the fuck on with it, you ridiculous freak."

 

Bruce dropped his hand.

 

"I've rehabilitated Tim from more direct and thorough conditioning than yours. Your anger, I know, was your own, and justified. I have, as you know, performed the surgery to restore something like Hush's face to himself. So. If you consented."

 

Jason breathed, but he was convinced he was dead.

 

"I would like... if I may... to offer some analgesia."

 

"It stood for - this has been on me for -- this stands for all of the -- for him --" Jason shuddered, in waves, and couldn't reach so much as the middle of a sentence.

 

"No, no. Silly," the insane man whispered. He had all of Batman's softness when Jason - whenever Robin had misbehaved or broken the rules or the law in the correct way. "It stands for 'Jason'."

 

His eyes flicked back to Jason's, the inner mausoleum back in between Bruce and the outside world. Jason whimpered --

 

\-- not unlike a puppy with his nose rubbed in it, he thought, and fuck, shit, cunt, fuck, cunt, fuck.

 

Shit.

 

“Yes.”

 

"Only if you want."

 

"Bruce..."

 

"No, no. Silly." His smile widened. His incisors were just a little too thin. "I'm Batman."


	4. Chapter 4

“Are you feeling quite all right, Jason?”

 

The new Hood was created, Jason learned, for two very simple purposes. Both of them were domestic and would not leave the new Cave.

 

“Yes, Daddy.”

 

Function number one: the Hood was to be used when it was decided that Jason did not need to see, or to hear, anything but what Batman chose to reveal.

 

“That’s wonderful, Jason.”

 

Function number two: show. Smooth and shaped red leather fit nicely over his scalp and face, baring his nose and mouth, and it grew to be muggy under there only very slowly.

 

“Daddy, I’m gonna stink if I stay under this. Won’t I? Did I stink before?”

 

Now, it’s important that you understand that there was a complication to each of these simple meanings.

 

“It’s only your own smell. We keep you clean as we can, but a tiercel will have his own smell. You feel this, Jason?”

 

To function number one: what Jason was decided to experience involved a great deal of input from Jason himself. It’s just that he wasn’t allowed to remember consenting, when they played it that way, so what he did and did not knowingly agree to got quite muddled.

 

Deliciously so, from Jason’s point of view.

 

“Yes. I think so? I mean… I feel the glove on my chest, Daddy. I feel – you’re sniffing me right now, that’s what I feel. Is there something else I should feel? Um. Um, besides – besides that. I thought I was a hawk for this, Daddy.” 

 

Experiencing and then remembering a deep and inescapable trust was more potent than the technology that allowed for it. Every time Jason had woken up, he’d felt a glow, a safety he’d never experienced in his life.

 

“Sorry, Jason, that was blurred. I mean the gauntlet. This leather. It’s broad, for my arm. We’re going to do some balance training, to... fit the little game that we have. We’ll see how big we can make you, then we’ll specie you.”

 

The complication for function number two was that it didn’t just show a beautiful red cap and a beautiful black tassel. It showed a control and enforced trust, and it showed a symbol once belonging to another man, repurposed, to supersede him.

 

After all, Jason had eventually learned, they were going to forget about him and move on.

 

The Hood was removed. Jason’s hair splashed wetly down from it, and his eyes fluttered to some version of open, but no type of sight.

 

Hatter’s tech, judiciously edited and streamlined by Bruce and Oracle just days before, would not wear off for another hour or so. If it didn’t go back on his head.

 

“Please don’t make me kill quail with my feet, Daddy. It’s gross.”

 

Batman’s laugh – okay, he could allow this thought, Daddy’s laugh – was the least scary kind of praise in the world. His kiss, to Jason’s shoulder, was the most threatening kiss Jason had ever received, and he loved it.

 

“Nothing like that, Jason. You’ll be rewarded if you complete the simulations. You remember the Predator programs? I’ve set up a few rooms for it. First, of course --”

 

“Wait, I.”

 

But the Red Hood was on him again. This sudden taking in and out of the space, too – he saw the videos later – had been discussed and consented to. The thrill of being forced into it never got old, for the rest of his life, but he wasn’t to know that yet. The thrill of risk never went away.

 

-

                               

Alfred really had shared, and the miracle of what was once Bruce Wayne cooking edible food was there for Jason to see and taste.

 

It was always a possibility that this was all an elaborate deception set up by Clayface or Nyssa or Hatter or whomever, but that possibility was rapidly draining away.

 

Jason knew himself well enough to know that he was impaired in judging that possibility.

 

He wasn’t just discouraged from questioning it by the hypnosis, the very occasional drugs, and the electromagnetic brainwashing built into the Hood. No. In addition, what was happening to him fit every sanctified nook and dirty corner of what he’d wanted and needed for his entire life. Even before stealing the tyres, all of these feelings were required.

 

Jason loved this so badly that he felt like he’d had his first meal for months, and it was only Batman’s previous training that led him to even consider questioning his luck.

 

“I want to talk about this… Joker-prion, Batman,” he said, over breakfast – quail’s eggs and blackberries.

 

There was a well-stocked small country home – one the Elliotts had left to Thomas Wayne – above the new Cave. As far as anyone was concerned, some British peer named Hemingway had bid for it when the Wayne estates that hadn’t passed onto the Drake-Gordons went up for sale.

 

The décor was as pretentious as Wayne Manor had been, but it was along a very different track. The ballroom had been converted into a gymnasium. The dining room was riddled with gargoyle, bat and bird motifs. Every room had dark, rich wallpaper. ‘The Batman’ as an image for the criminals of Gotham was dead, and Batman himself had become obvious in his tastes. Almost always unmasked, too.

 

“Where would you like me to begin, Jason? How it happened, how it ended, how it developed?”

 

“Well, no, I don’t mean the story.” Jason sipped the coffee – sweet as fuck. Hm. “I mean, what was it like? Did you feel Joker-thoughts, or see anything his way? Was it like the Hood?”

 

The mention of the Joker’s name used to bring half a panic attack. Not anymore. He could forget and move on – and remember and know. There was no contradiction when one was about pain and the other was about information.

 

“That was the strangest thing about it, Jason. I… I experience hallucinations as linear paths and activities, you know. The Lazarus pit felt like flying through a crumbling city, led by a spirit of Ra’s. Hatter’s spells were always escapable if I beat up everything and everyone I saw.”

 

“Because you’re insane.”

 

“Just so. This wasn’t electromagnetic or hypnotic, though, it was chemical. Prions spread by converting the version of the prion protein in the host to their own form. If that was the mechanism behind the shade of Joker I saw, there would have been sections of memory only available to him and not to me, and he’d just have grown while I shrank. But that didn’t happen. We had access to the same memories, and information about how I remembered feeling came up a lot, and… No. I didn’t feel what he felt.”

                                                                                                                                

“You’re sure? You got pretty aggressive when Scarecrow dosed you a third time…” Breakfast was done, so Jason dutifully moved around to sit on Bruce’s shoulders. He hadn’t done that since he was 18, but it was the most natural thing in the world.

 

Natural as giant plants, or the roaring fire in the dark morning.

 

“I saw Joker everywhere there. No, I’m certain we were separate entities – he saw my memories. There was one moment, when I was going back into the studios, where Joker said we ‘both knew’ I’d killed him. His death was his own recklessness and good luck on my part. This personality felt indignant, had beliefs of its own. I wonder if it wasn’t made of some memories, for all that it wasn’t me.”

 

“Was it really encouraged by the fear gas, up until the end?” Jason squeezed down with his thighs, saw if he could get his knees together. Batman’s new neck – from a minor derivative of venom – took the punishment happily.

 

“Jason, I need oxygen to speak…”

 

“Get over it and focus.” Jason knit his fingers into Batman’s hair. “You ridiculous freak.”

 

“I think that the Lazarus I took in Arkham City must have changed or curtailed the prion infection, and the fear gas encouraged it again.” Batman’s voice was far away, but immediate. Jason had learned how to listen for the man reaching into his memory versus creation of false information. “Joker did take over, and instead of memories, I saw this elaborate fantasy about killing people in Gotham and burning it to the ground. But then he was gassed, and I saw _his_ fears come to life – even though I didn’t know what they were before.”

 

Bruce’s hands – shaking – wrapped around Jason’s knees, then shifted up, down, around, overheating him a little.

 

“What scared him, then?” Jason’s hands shook, too, and Bruce took them.

 

“It was – oh, this should be a sin, but it was _wonderful,_ Jason. First, he saw a tomb, built like a maze. He saw his own wake, which only Harley attended. This was true, except for what Harley had been wearing and the cops who broke in. Then...” Batman froze for a second, the shaking having reached all of him.

 

Jason gripped two fistfuls of his hair.

 

“He went into a little office. A radio was on. Vicki was interviewing someone: ‘Today marks the anniversary of the Joker’s death.’ ‘Sorry, who? The question mark guy’s dead?’”

 

Jason giggled – very softly – and leaned down to look in his old friend’s eyes.

 

“And, to make a long story short…”

 

“Too late.”

 

“…he lost all control of his own psyche. I put him where I put Matches after that incident with Selina, and when Scarecrow injected the next batch, the… er… The room…”    

 

“If you speak about this any other way than you see it, we’ll be here all day. So, uh… That big prison you mentioned. I remember. It had Bruce in one of those cages… Quigley… Hemingway…”

 

“The prison burned down when the toxin hit, and took them with it.” The former vigilante stood up from his chair, and gathered the dishes. Jason hooked his ankles around Batman’s upper back, it not being his turn that day. He needed the practice, and anyway, Batman was warm. “The steel cages and boxes all melted or evaporated. The bats – and I, myself – flew up and out of it as the prison was destroyed. Joker was a skeleton wrapped in a pile of dried steel the following morning, and now, there’s no trace of his prion in my body or his personality in my mind. In that interview in the ‘fear’ hallucination, Vicki and the civilian, they’d kept saying…”

 

“Let’s forget about him and move on.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“Am I meant to congratulate you for brainwashing your family to do what he was most afraid of…?”

 

“Why do you think he tortured you? Took you away? Well. No. That’s the wrong question.” Jason was glad the Batman voice – the real Batman voice – was so much less husky than on the street. “The more he transgressed, the more attention and the more… you know. He needed the recognition, and for people to demand to know why he did it.”

 

“No different from Riddler, then?”

 

“More like a mass shooter. Anyway. Let’s forget about him and move on.”

 

Jason’s head swam, and he whispered, “let’s forget about him and move on,” and felt flight, happiness. A childhood slotted into place where none had been before. Dishes done, breakfast finished, Jason was set down on the red leather couch, where he found himself squatting. “I… I’m okay, Daddy. I’m here.”

 

“Yes, Jason. We’re going to play a lot, today, okay? Gym first.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title, obviously, from Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You".


End file.
